


All Things But Love

by Isis



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Challenge Response, Inspired by Poetry, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-02-01
Updated: 2003-02-01
Packaged: 2018-02-24 06:49:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2572088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isis/pseuds/Isis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry looks for the love he ran from fifteen years earlier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Things But Love

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the veela-inc Valentine's Day Challenge, in which the object was to incorporate an assigned quotation into the story. I was given my choice of two quotations, and chose both of them. They are obvious in the text; the first is by Shakespeare, and the second by Edna St. Vincent Millay.

"Gods, Harry. How wonderful to see you again. It's been fifteen years, hasn't it? Of course, I knew you'd be back." 

Harry looked down into the delighted face of Parvati Patil.  "Of course."  Presumably, as Divinations Professor at Hogwarts, she had had some idea of what the future would hold.  Presumably. 

"I can't believe Minerva lured you away to teach flying here." 

"Well, I'm over thirty.  All washed up." At her frown, he hastily added, "For a pro Quidditch player, I mean. I was about to retire anyway. But thirty-three's not really old." 

"No," agreed Parvati.  She leaned back, curled up in the only comfortable chair in the staffroom.  "So, tell me about your life as a pro Quidditch player." 

"What, you don't know already?" 

She gave him an annoyed look.  "I don't use my Gift for prying into people's personal lives. It's far too important for that." 

Harry laughed.  "No, I didn't mean that. My personal life has been all over the Daily Prophet. I'd be surprised if you hadn't seen something." 

"Only that you've been romancing every witch and wizard from here to Liverpool." 

"Surely you're not jealous?" 

"After the way you treated me at our Yule Ball fourth year?  I think that got me over any crush I might have had."  They shared a laugh. 

"Listen, Parvati, I'm glad to have run into you here. Before going in to supper, I mean, and seeing the others. You can give me the run-down on what's happening." 

"It wasn't a coincidence," she said, raising a meaningful eyebrow. 

"No, of course not."  Privately, he doubted she had much more "sight" than that old fraud Trelawney.  But it was wonderful to see an old school chum, and he wasn't about to alienate her by voicing his opinion.  "Tell me who's on staff these days.  I know Charlie Weasley's doing Care of Magical Creatures, now that Hagrid, well…" his voice trailed away.  Hagrid had been one of the casualties of the Last Battle.  Along with the old headmaster Dumbledore, and Ron and Charlie's father, and, well, more other friends than he really wanted to think about. 

"Let's see.  Lupin's doing Defense again.  Professor Vector retired three years ago, and the Arithmancy job was taken by Ulric Olafssen, from Durmstrang.  Muggle Studies is being taught by Dennis Creevey -- remember him? Colin's brother?" 

"Amazing," Harry said, shaking his head.  "He was only fourteen the last time I saw him.  Binns still around?" 

"Can't get rid of him." Parvati sighed. 

Harry waited a moment, but she didn't seem inclined to continue.  There was one professor in particular he wondered about.  Someone he both dreaded seeing, and wanted to see.  Finally, he ventured, "And Snape?" 

She snorted.  "As unpleasant as ever, and twice as bitter." 

Snape, he thought.  Still here.  The last time he'd seen his old Potions professor had been just after the Last Battle.  Dumbledore had fallen, leaving them back-to-back, defending each other, defending the light.  Just recalling it brought back the horror.  They'd fought together, and they'd killed together, and at the end they had collapsed together, drained and hollow.  Harry closed his eyes, remembering. 

He had closed his eyes then, on the battlefield.  He had been exhausted from the effort, and he'd fallen asleep, curled against Snape's reassuring warmth.  It hadn't mattered, at that moment, that the man was rude, and petty, and as edgy and sharp as a blade; they were comrades in arms, and more importantly, they were both alive.  Alive. 

He'd woken to find Snape stroking his hair silently, and tensed.  "Is it…is everything…" 

"It's all right, Potter.  It's over.  You saved the world again."  The familiar sneering note in Snape's voice was tempered with something else.  Admiration?  Respect? 

"Couldn't have done it without you."  It was no less than the truth. 

"Noble to the last," Snape had murmured.  And then. 

And then Snape had kissed him, very gently and briefly on the lips, and Harry had pushed him away in horror and surprise.  He'd said the first thing that had come to mind:  "You don't even like me!" 

"Friendship is present in all things but love."  It was a quote from Shakespeare, although Harry hadn't recognized it at the time, and his eyes had widened at the words. 

"You don't like me," he had whispered.  "And I don't like you."  Somewhere behind him he heard Ron calling his name, and Sirius, and Minerva, and he'd scrambled to his feet and run in the direction of the voices.  And he hadn't looked back. 

Later he had made excuses, in his mind; Snape had been overwhelmed with the battle, with the exhaustion and the camaraderie, with the horrors of having seen friends die before him.  Still, he had avoided Snape at the ceremonies that followed, the Orders of Merlin and the Ribbons of Merit.  He had avoided him for fifteen years.  Fifteen years of playing Quidditch, and being famous, and giving talks at Ministries in other countries.  Fifteen years of lovers who were only after his fame, or who smothered him with affection until he had to escape, or who simply didn't understand what it had been like, to fight, to win, to lose.  He had managed to remain friends with most of them.  But now and again he wondered if perhaps love could be found where friendship had failed. 

Parvati waved her hand in front of his face, breaking his reverie.  "Come on. Time for supper." 

 Dinner in the great hall was a quiet affair; the students wouldn't arrive for another week, and the room seemed overly large without the usual press of bodies.  Harry sat between Parvati and Professor Lupin -- it was going to be strange calling him "Remus," as the man had requested immediately -- and studied Snape from a distance. 

Snape had aged as gracefully as he did everything else, Harry supposed.  The long black hair was stranded with silver now, but the black eyes looked every bit as sharp as when they'd glared at him in Potions class, so many years ago.  His hawk profile was as forbidding as ever, his lips tight, and he ate entirely in silence. 

Lupin's voice broke into his thoughts. "We missed you, you know." 

"Missed me?" 

"You ran off into the big world so abruptly.  Sirius always owled me with your latest, but Minerva and I -- well, many of us -- would have liked it if you'd visited once in a while." Lupin smiled, a bit sadly.  "After so many died, it seemed more important to keep close ties with the living." 

"Close ties," mused Harry.  He indicated Snape with a nod of his chin.  "Did you and Snape ever make up your, er, differences?" 

"We're no longer enemies.  But we're not friends." Lupin paused.  "I doubt he has any friends, actually." 

"No surprise there." 

"Not like that, Harry. He changed, after the Last Battle. He's not as confrontational as he used to be. Oh, he still terrorizes the students as much as always. But he's much more walled off. A most unhappy man." 

"I see."  Harry took a few more bites of food, then deliberately changed the subject.  But while he chatted about Quidditch with Lupin and Hogwarts gossip with Parvati, his mind was on the dark and silent Potions professor.  He had been an exacting teacher and a harsh disciplinarian; but throughout the horror of the war he had been the truest ally at his back, one that Harry had discovered he could trust with his life.  In a world of sycophants and hangers-on, Snape could be counted on to tell him the truth in no uncertain terms. 

Suddenly Snape looked up from his plate, saw Harry staring at him.  And looked away. 

After the meal, Snape was one of the first to push his chair away from the table.  Harry watched the tall figure stride across the Great Hall, a forbidding, solitary figure.  "Excuse me," he murmured to Parvati, and rose to follow. 

He caught up with Snape in the hallway leading to the dungeons.  "Professor!" 

Snape whirled, black robes billowing.  "What do you want, Potter?"  The sneering words crossed time as much as space, made Harry feel fifteen again, caught in the act, doing something wrong. 

"To talk," he choked out, "just to talk to you. For a moment." 

Snape leaned up against the stone wall, arms crossed.  "So.  Talk."  His voice was icy. 

"I haven't seen you in a very long time." 

"A pity to ruin things now." 

"Lupin -- Remus says you've settled your differences. Now that I'll be working here, we should settle ours as well." 

"There is nothing to settle." 

Harry looked at his feet, then up again.  "Do you still hate me, then?" 

"I have never hated you, Potter." 

"Could have fooled me," he murmured. 

Snape sighed.  The dim and flickering light of the wall sconces cast deep shadows on his face, softening his harsh features.  "I have never hated you. However, I have disliked you. I have resented you. I have, on rare occasion, respected you." 

"On rare occasion," repeated Harry.  "That was all I ever wanted, you know. Your respect." 

"We rarely get what we want, Potter." 

Harry bit back the angry words that rose to his throat.  Hadn't he done the best he could?  He'd never asked to be the Savior of the Wizarding World.  He'd been forced into it at seventeen, barely an adult and watching his friends die at his enemies' hands.  Had killed those enemies with his own hands.  To be treated as a child again by a man who had fought beside him was an insult.  "I believe that I deserve your respect." 

"We rarely get what we want.  Whether or not we deserve it."  Snape's expression was unreadable.  "But I will concede. Your conduct in the Last Battle proved to me that you were worthy of my respect." 

"Thank you,"said Harry. But what, he wondered, had his conduct afterwards proven? He was silent a moment, then softly added, "But you didn't get what you wanted." 

"I suppose I didn't deserve it." 

"Maybe not then."  He looked at the floor.  "Do you still want it?" 

"Does it matter any more?"  The brittle note in Snape's voice cut into him like a knife.  "I have loved badly; loved the great too soon, withdrawn my words too late." 

"And eaten in an echoing hall, alone and from a chipped plate, the words that I withdrew too late," Harry finished.  All things but love, he thought, reaching out to take Snape's unresisting hand in his own.  Green eyes met black. 

"It's not too late." 


End file.
